Accidental Murder
by InterfaceLeader
Summary: Reno and Rude have a slight problem... which quickly spirals into a big problem.


Warning: This story contains plenty of disrespect to the dead. Not particularly bloody, but maybe a little too disturbing for some. Read it anyway, because everyone disregards these warnings right?

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Accidental Murder

__

By InterfaceLeader

Crash!

"Rude! You idiot!"

Two heads poked out of the now shattered window. The first was square, strong and firm. Bald on top but with a brown fringe of hair around his mouth and chin. His eyes were hidden by dark glasses. The second was thinner, sharper, with a shock of red hair that stuck out in all directions before being yanked into a long ponytail held in place with an elastic band. The tail hung over one shoulder, and strands of it blew gently in the breeze. His face was marred by two identical scars on each cheek, and his sunglasses were pushed up onto his forehead revealing two bright green-blue eyes currently flashing angrily.

"Rude! When you interrogate someone you're not supposed to throw them out the window! Especially not a sixty-third story window!"

"........."

"And even more especially not high profile organised crime king pins who are about to spill the beans on the whereabouts of their entire gang! How'm I gonna get my bonus _now_!?" The red head glowered at his taller companion.

"........Do you think he's still alive?"

"Does he look alive to you?"

"..........No." Rude conceded. 

"Right! People don't usually live when their guts are sprayed over a 50 metre radius!"

"..........."

"Ah... crap. I'm not taking the blame for this. You threw him out the window, you take the rap. Understood?"

".........You know I can't afford another pay dock."

"Yeah well, you should have thought of that before playing volleyball with the poor guy."

"Because I'm still paying off the damage on my car." Rude turned his expressionless face towards Reno, who cringed.

"Oh ah... you still haven't paid that off?"

"No."

"Hmmm." Reno looked down the building towards the figure that lay below. "Maybe we could.... cover this up somehow?"

"..........."

"I mean, we could... we could... patch him together? As though he hadn't suffered sudden contact with the ground?"

"..........."

"Come on!" Reno whacked Rude on the shoulder "I'll get the duct tape, you go borrow a sewing kit from somewhere!" 

"......fine" Rude did a similar whack on his friends shoulder, nearly precipitating him out the window. "But if Tseng sees through it you're taking the blame."

"Man..." Reno muttered, rubbing his shoulder "Wreck a guys car once and you end up paying for life..."

-~-~-~-~-~-

When Tseng got back from his task of guarding the president on yet another lengthy speech he was tired. When he entered the Turk office – currently doubling as the interrogation cells due to an unfortunate accident involving Reno, a cigarette and a pile of gunpowder – it was dark, and the blinds had been drawn.

In the very darkest corner, partially hidden behind a filing cabinet, sat a slumped figure tied tightly to a chair. His two Turks stood in front of the figure, obscuring even more of it from view. Rude stood has he always did, hands behind his back, legs slightly apart. Reno was twitchy, shifting from foot to foot. Tseng attributed this to the fact he had banned him from smoking in the building.

"How did it go?" 

"............" 

"Fine." Reno said hastily. "It went fine." 

Tseng waited for a second but it seemed no more information was forthcoming. "What did you find out?" He asked impatiently.

"Umm.... we got a lead on...sector six."

"What part of sector six?"

"All of it." Reno said without thinking. Rude glanced at him, and he recalled Rude lived in sector six. "That is to say, numbers 32-46 on sixty-second street of sector six."

"Good." Tseng moved over to his desk, frowning at the paperwork that had piled up during his absence. "Take him back to the cell and then check out those addresses. I'll have a word with him later, see if I can get anything you missed."

"Sure..." Reno said reluctantly. He poked Rude and waved at the strapped figure. Rude picked it up, chair and all, and carefully carried it from the room. Reno followed, keeping himself between it and Tseng. He was thankful Tseng had already absorbed himself in forms.

-~-~-~-~-~-

"Support its head!" 

Rude caught hold of the figures chin and pushed it back into place, pressing the duct tape that held it on down more firmly.

".......We can't leave it here like this......"

"I know we can't!"

Reno looked miserably at the figure. In the darkness of the Turks office it had seemed passable. But in the brighter lights by the cells the clumsy stitching and copious amounts of tape made it look like something out of Frankenstein.

Rude was examining the figure too, though for a different reason.

"....Reno...."

"What?"

"You're terrible at sewing."

"Screw you." Reno slumped by the cell wall and racked his brains. "How about we fake an escape?"

"We'd be blamed for not locking him up properly."

"Hmmm..... How about if we fake his death? Make it look like he commited suicide?"

"Make it look like he managed to fall from a great height inside a cell?"

"It could happen...."

"And then stitched himself back together?"

"Maybe we could turn him into a zombie! We could raid Hojo's lab, grab a few chemicals and bingo! The walking talking undead!"

"I don't think that's going to work...."

"Well we can't leave him, can't get rid of him, can't change him..."

"Replace him?"

"You mean find someone who looks similar? That could work... Tseng hasn't actually seen the guy close up...."

"Come on then." Rude picked up the chair again, trying to ignore the sloshing noise the corpse made as it fell forward against its restraints.

-~-~-~-~-~-

Martin was walking home from work when he saw the two arguing blue suited men with some kind of Guy Fawkes type doll in-between. Curiosity overcame him and he walked up to them.

"What's going on?"

Both men swung round, the smaller red-head clearly furious.

"Who said you could sneak up on us!?"

"I couldn't help noticing your Guy Fawkes... bit early for that isn't it?" Martin waved at the doll. Now that he was closer it was looking less like a Guy Fawkes and more like....

"Is that a _corpse_?" Martin was fascinated, he had never seen anything quite so grotesque.

"No!" The red-head pulled Martin away from the figure, spinning him around and walking him back down the alley. "It's a... very accurate waxwork figure! Of a corpse!"

"Really? 'Cause it looks like my cousin." Martin smiled pleasantly at the man. Who had paused, studying him.

"Your cousin huh?" The red-head's mood swung from angry to friendly in a heartbeat. "Where does your cousin live?"

"Over in sector eight." Martin frowned. "He's very rich, has a big house."

Reno noticed the resentment in the young mans voice and even as he started steering him towards sector eight – waving discreetly at Rude to follow – the man started the full sob story.

"In fact he's _loaded_ but does he spare us a penny? Not him! He's too good for us, that's the problem, I mean it took us _years_ to save up enough to get a house in sector three and everyone knows the houses in sector eight are the best 'cause they're so modern and yet he can afford it no problem, just because of who his brother is, and then when my little Deirdre falls sick _then_ he can't afford to contribute any money towards the hospital bills because suddenly he's only just scraping a living! Stupid rich git! I hate him! And Deirdre's still sick and I have to work nights just to afford the doctor's fee's and Shinra's threatening to take our house back and he could ask his brother to let us have a little more time but all he does is look sympathetic and-"

Reno switched off. He hated listening to people's life stories.

Behind him Rude listened to Martin's ongoing rant, struggling to keep the corpse fairly level. Unfortunately a lone bump in the street sent him staggering forward and the corpse's head fell off and rolled and bounced down the street with some unpleasant noises. Rude glanced up. Reno wasn't paying the slightest attention to his plight, and he decided to give up. Dumping the chair and corpse into a nearby dumpster he turned and went home.

-~-~-~-~-~-

"....so he's bought himself a Jacuzzi now, a frikkin' Jacuzzi and he expects us to believe he's-"

"Shut up." Reno looked up at the house Martin had led him to. It was a tall, grandiose structure with plenty of ornamentation. Because this was Midgar there was no garden, but the house would have looked perfect set against a few acres of rolling woods and manicured lawns.

"Hey Rude" said Reno, turning towards where he thought his friend was "how d'ya think we should – Rude?"

Martin looked back as well. The tall bald man carrying the corpse had gone.

"Oh great! Just abandon me why don't ya!?" Reno yelled at the empty street. "Fine! I'll do it without you!" He marched up to the house, pulling out a thin metal rod at the same time.

"Martin! Getcha ass up here!"

Martin complied, joining Reno as he pushed the doorbell. There was silence for a second, then the door was opened by a creaky old butler, with a haggard face and a crisp black suit. He ran a rheumy eye up and down them, clearly disapproving of what he saw.

"Yes?" His voice was cool.

"Martin here." Reno pushed the young man forward "Has come to see his cousin. So drag him out of his Jacuzzi, shuffle whatever meetings the guy has and clean his ears because we're here for a nice long family chat."

The butler curled his upper lip, and indicated for them to come in. "You can wait in the library. Don't touch anything, it's just been cleaned."

-~-~-~-~-

They waited in the library for some time. Reno spent it rearranging the books so they were no longer in alphabetical order and scribbling dedication messages to various "workers" at the Honey Bee Inn on the inside jackets. 

When the cousin finally showed up he turned out to be a small plump man in a green suit. He had grown a large moustache, but it just exaggerated his puny and receding chin. 

"Martin, how – "

Reno brought his rod up to the back of his head, tipping him forward into the very suprised Martin's arms. 

"D- did you kill him?" Martin asked alarmed, staggering under the weight of the man.

"Nope. Come on, we'll go out the window." Reno pulled it open. "I'll go first, and you pass him out to me OK?"

"O- ok." 

Reno scrambled out of the window, dropping the few feet to the ground easily. Turning he grabbed hold off the feet of Martin's cousin, treating him none too gently as they squeezed his bulk through the window. Then Martin jumped out, landing on the pavement outside and looking round anxiously.

"You know... you didn't need to go to this much trouble..." Martin muttered, looking at the unconscious figure being supported between them.

"Relax." Reno said cheerfully. "I do this kind of thing all the time. You go home, your cousin will be fine. Promise. And don't tell anyone what happened alright?"

"Alright..." Martin scampered off, glad to be away from the person he had decided was crazy as a loon.

-~-~-~-~-~-

Reno relaxed on his sofa, enjoying a cold beer from the fridge and flicking through the channels on his TV. 

Everything had gone off swimmingly, he decided, switching between a steamy scene of passion and the chocobo races. He'd shaved off the guys moustache, dumped him in the cell, and Tseng had still been working through the piles of paper on his desk when he had left. No one would ever know what had happened.

His PHS beeped suddenly, in a shrill mockery of a popular tune. Reno answered it cheerfully, watching chocobo's steam round a track. He'd betted his bonus on the blue one.

"Yep?"

"Reno? Can I ask you a question or two?" Tseng's voice.

"Sure!" Reno replied cheerfully.

"Firstly, why have an Old Folks Home phoned us up complaining about a badly sewn-up corpse in the dumpster outside their building?"

"Uh.......corpse?" Reno stared unseeing at the blue chocobo as it rounded a bend.

"Secondly, why has a young man by the name of Martin turned up in our office in tears over his part in an "accidental" kidnapping he and a "red-haired stranger" carried out?"

"Kidnapping.....?" Reno watched as a second chocobo came up from the inside, drawing level with the blue.

"And thirdly, why has _Heidegger's brother shown up in our jail cell minus his moustache!?_"

"Hei- Heidegger's brother!?" And the second chocobo pulled ahead to cross the finish line first. 

****

The End

A/N: Hopefully that was sort of entertaining. Let me know if you thought it was. 

A couple of notes: I wasn't sure if I should put in Frankenstein, but then I thought of Vincent and decided they probably had the same horror movies we had. Then I debated over Guy Fawkes, but couldn't think of anything else to put it in its place. And then I wondered at the likelihood of a massive country house in Midgar but I liked the idea of parodying Cluedo too much to drop it. (It was Reno in the Library with the electro-mag rod!)

So uh... it's full of plot holes. Sue me _;;


End file.
